Royal Flying Doctor Service’s new lifesaving helicopter visits Narrogin Health Service

The Royal Flying Doctor Service’s new helicopter landed on the pad at Narrogin Health Service to introduce the aircraft to the local health professionals.

The service will welcome two EC145 helicopters to their 20-aircraft fleet next year to increase their capacity to respond to patients in regional WA.

Over the next month the RFDS’ team of pilots, doctors and flight nurses will be visiting regional centres to familiarise themselves with the helicopter landing sites.

The crew will also be meeting with health professionals to introduce them to the new service and run through patient handling and logistical procedures.

RFDS WA medical officer John Iliff said the helicopters would significantly increase RFDS’ capacity to meet the critical health needs of regional residents.

“The helicopters can be deployed to towns within 250km of our Jandakot base and will enable many patients to get a faster journey to hospital,” Dr Iliff said.

“For critically unwell patients the RFDS will be able to bring patients direct to tertiary hospitals, landing on their helipads and providing us with another aircraft option.

“This will ensure we can provide the most appropriate and timely inter-hospital transfers in each individual patient’s case.”

Narrogin’s Ann McLeish has been fundraising for the RFDS for the past 13 years.

At the helicopter open day she presented a cheque for $8400 to the RFDS crew on behalf of Earl Street Physiotherapy.

Ms McLeish has also surpassed her fundraising target of $250,000 and she said she had no plans to slow down.

“It’s an absolutely fantastic service that we can’t do without,” she said.

“When I first started fundraising my brother was flown by the RFDS and I thought well, it’s a free service, I should give back. The first year I raised about $1000 and it’s just gone up from there.

“I’ve now had six family members flown out on RFDS, so I just keep fundraising.”